Confessions of a Personal Chef!

When I was a child in Colom­bia, I hated going to the super­mar­ket with my grand­mother, mom and aunts. I just could never fig­ure out why. It was a per­fect trip for a bunch of kids. We always got to pick out our favourite “Jet” Choco­latas, which we waited all week for not for the choco­late (believe it or not!) but because every bar came with a new sticker add to our album of Amaz­ing Ani­mals. But back to the super­mar­ket. I think what I dis­liked so much was that it all just seemed so arti­fi­cial — every­thing in cans or care­fully arranged in bins, and while it all looked good, so lit­tle of it had any smell.

Now, being invited to go to “el mer­cado libre” (the year-around open farm­ers’ mar­ket) was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story. I loved the colours, the aro­mas, talk­ing to the peo­ple, and the free­dom to wan­der­ around stand after stand of fresh pro­duce, all ready to be taken home. Not that I ever cooked any of it, of course; with one mom and four aunts, we already had too many cooks in the kitchen.

I don’t know what hap­pened when I grew up, but all that love for food — real food — fell asleep for many, many years. Not a hun­dred years like Sleep­ing Beauty, but at least until I was in my 30s, work­ing in a Web design company

I was liv­ing in Canada, very, very far away from my home, my fam­ily and any famil­iar tastes. But in my adopted home­land, I was rein­tro­duced to a whole new world of foods and flavours, and a whole new group of peo­ple who were ded­i­cated to a love of food, the sea­sons and the land that pro­duces such a rich bounty of won­der­ful things to eat.

Now, after years of study and sev­eral life­times of expe­ri­ences, I am a Per­sonal Chef! I spend pretty much all my wak­ing hours think­ing, read­ing, plan­ning, cook­ing, shop­ping, chop­ping – or eat­ing – food! I am also a cook­book junkie, and any mag­a­zine arti­cle, news­pa­per, book, any­thing — if it’s about food or cook­ing, I have to read it.

My beloved David (Unof­fi­cial Editor-in-Chief) believes I have a lot of infor­ma­tion in my head. I still believe I don’t know any­thing yet. But any ideas I do get, I write every one in my Kitchen Note­book.

This old/new never-ending pas­sion has shown me both sides of the nour­ish­ing coin: the peo­ple who eat any­thing and every­thing (both in good ways and bad), and the peo­ple who, for either health or eth­i­cal rea­sons, don’t. This last group has led me see the culi­nary word with dif­fer­ent eyes. I guess it’s not so strange con­sid­er­ing that I am a French-trained, Latin American-born chef liv­ing in Canada, but cook­ing for my clients has led me to love think­ing glob­ally and cook­ing locally.

Veg­ans and raw food-ists have shown me food, cook­ing tech­niques and ingre­di­ents in a way that is very far from the clas­sic French Tech­niques I learned when I went to school at the Cor­don Bleu. All of them have made me a bet­ter cook and, more impor­tantly, a more curi­ous one.

All of these pas­sions and dis­cov­er­ies — the things I find, the recipes I learn (the easy way or the hard way), the mis­takes I make and the ways I find to cor­rect them — all of this is what I have col­lected in all the note­books that are col­lect­ing dust on my kitchen book­shelf. So I decided to make peace with the trees and start writ­ing on-line instead.

This blog – Cook­ing Jour­neys Kitchen Note­book – is the result. It is my note­book, my jour­nal, a col­lec­tion of all the expe­ri­ences I have as I travel (in per­son or from my kitchen) around the world, seek­ing out the best cuisines, cooks, chefs, prod­ucts, tips, books and resources to improve my life in the kitchen and at the table. It isn’t specif­i­cally a col­lec­tion of recipes, but some of those might find their way here, too.

Maybe, some­body will find and read what I write. Maybe he or she will find it help­ful. Maybe he or she has a bet­ter idea and might want to share it or com­ment about it. (Please do!) Or maybe some­body else will get inspired by it, and use it to reignite their own pas­sion for won­der­ful food, extra­or­di­nary culi­nary expe­ri­ences, and the joy, love and laugh­ter that can only be found at the table.

This is my Cook­ing Jour­ney. I hope it can be yours, too. I look for­ward to chat­ting with you along the way!